"AT the start of 1957 Lyndon believed that his presidential
prospects for 1960 depended on steering a middle course between liberals and conservatives without alienating either of them. Like FDR in 1932, he would have to be "a chameleon on plaid." "Yesterday was my
first day back in the office after arriving in Washington and they have
begun to hit at me from all sides," Lyndon wrote George Brown on
January 3. He had been anticipating renewed tensions with liberals, but
he now found himself under the gun from conservatives who could deny
him the Majority Leadership. If only one of the forty-nine Democrats
defected, Vice President Nixon would have given Republicans control of
the upper house. "The Republicans planned to organize the Senate any
time they had forty-eight Senators present who would vote for Republican organization," William Knowland told Johnson.
15

Hopes of turning the Democrats' two-seat advantage into a tie partly
rested with freshman Senator Frank Lausche of Ohio, a conservative
five-term Democratic governor, whom Eisenhower had considered making his running mate in 1956. Lausche had encouraged rumors that he
would vote with the Republicans to organize the Senate. When he failed
to show up at the Democratic caucus on January 3, it added to fears that
he might bolt the party. "I don't know if I'll be the majority or minority
leader," Lyndon told his colleagues. Lyndon knew, however, that Lausche
would have no clout in either party if he joined the Republicans, and so
Lyndon ignored him. Although Lausche lent some drama to the vote on
Senate organization by passing on the first roll call, he cast his ballot
with the Democrats on the second.
2

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